The death fear.

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I finally have my copy of the Dr Sears book. ( oh thank you soz!!! )
And I was looking at some of the things in it about the new parent roller coaster. And I looked into other books that I have for the same subject.

I have had this horrile fear of bean dying in her sleep. I get up sometimes 3 times in a night to check on her. I check in on her while she naps. I peek at her when she is around the corner in her swing. It is getting stronger then I know what to do about?

In all the books I have read, the idea I get is that this fear is natural, and usually starts soon after the child is born. Alot of Doctors think that this fear is amplified by the sudden drop of hormones a womans body experiences after child birth... Ok, all that is find and dandy.. but Bean is a year old.
My body is back on its hormone track. nowhere do I see any referrance to this fear later on in a childs life.
Am I behind on the new parent fear scale? Is it normal for this fear to be so dominating?
I get scared she will die of SIDS, I get scared she will have a heart attack, I get scared she will hurt herself on her bed... I am just scared alot lately for her life. Yet, I am very rational about the fact that she is safe. Sids is a danger, YES, but she is physically able to move herself around in her bed now and the chances of her dying from sids is very low at this point in her life.
Yet, im scared to death sometimes to even walk in her room because this death fear makes me think I will find her after something happened.
( big sigh ) ..... this is normal right?

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It's normal. :-)

Glad you like the book!

I dunno, my anxiety level fluctuates but I'm STILL not over that in a lot of ways. Recent internal monologue:

Ah, the yard will be so cool this summer, sozlet can run around and explore and find little creatures and stuff. I bet there are frogs back there. It's kinda buggy, bet there will be a lot of mosquitoes. Eh, I was covered with mosquito bites my whole childhood. *WEST NILE WEST NILE WEST NILE* Shut UP! I'll put bug spray on her. I mean really, what are the chances? *WEST NILE WEST NILE WEST NILE* Argh, but there has to be more health problems in keeping her inside, and I'm not going to keep her inside all the time. How would you feel if you knowingly exposed her to the risk and she DID get West Nile? Argh!! She won't! The chance is infinitismally small! But there are no guarantees... No, no, there are no guarantees, but if I keep her inside all the time, THAT would guarantee a thing or two...

ETC.

Shocked

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I have this too. I'm not so worried about them dying in their sleep or of sickness, but I torture myself imagining horrible freak accidents where they are mortally wounded.

I think it's just an awareness of how devastating it would be to lose either one of them.

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HA!
you live in my head!
Frustrating isnt it!
I think the same thing over and over again, including the west nile thought...
She is sleeping, she is ok, BUT I LEFT A BLANKET, but she may be cold, she is ok, BUT SHE IS YOUNG SIDS SIDS SIDS!!!

>sigh<

I figured this is something I am going to go through for a while and probally drive her nuts with later on in life.
I have a radio monitor in her room and for my peace , I have turned up the frequency so that I hear alot more. Not good for sleep, because I can hear her fart.. Shocked

( this thing is reallllly good!) But, it helps to hear her roll over, mumble etc..
I have made myself listen to the radio before I get out of bed sometimes , and that has helped too.

I am thinking I am going to have to have a radio permanently fused to her body as she gets older. I will get grey hairs before I turn 40 worrying about her.
Laughing

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Someone once told me they stopped worrying when their daughter went off to college. Until then she made herself crazy with worry. I tend to be a worrier too and I checked on my girls quite often just to make sure they were breathing when they were babies. I still worry about them, but it's different things these days. School, boyfriends, drugs, drinking, driving, combinations of any of the previous things. The worrying hasn't stopped but the themes have changed.

We almost lost K when she was 8 months old. It was the worst day of my life. She had a complex febrile seizure that lasted over 45 mins. She ended up in pediactric intensive care at one of the large medical centers in the city. It was touch and go for awhile. I felt justified in worrying after that, not that my worrying about anything made things any better, I just didn't worry about worrying any more. I let myself have that bit of peace - not trying to stop worrying and just going with it.

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How awful that must have been J-b. I can not imagine. I am glad to hear that things finally went ok. Does K still have seizures?

Freeduck- that is what I am doing now. I have created entire scenes in my head about what would happen to bean at night. >sigh< I thought parents were only supposed to worry when they were OUT of the house. Laughing

Last night I was thinking about this and how consuming it is worrying about your child. I cant say that I have ever loved another single human being the way I love her. And if this worry is part of that, I wouldnt change it for anything in the world... except for a cup of chamomile tea and a Xanex... Laughing

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My older daughter is six and I still get this fear. Especially the part where I am fearful of entering her room and will not see her breathing. It is frightening, but I try to convince myself how irrational it is. I wonder if moms ever completely get over this fear.

And sozobe - you put bug spray on her and then worry about the effects of the chemicals.

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I know Mr Wolf gets this same fear. I wonder if a fathers attachment/fear is the same level as ours?

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Oh my husband's is actually much, much worse. He has the big fears but he has more little fears, too. He says "be careful!!" about a thousand times a day. When sozlet was littler, she was pretending to be us -- when she was E.G., she said "be careful!" When she was me, she said, "Oh, it's fine." ;-)

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(And yes, Linkat, chemicals! Gahhhhrrrgggghhh....)

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shewolfnm wrote:

How awful that must have been J-b. I can not imagine. I am glad to hear that things finally went ok. Does K still have seizures?

Last night I was thinking about this and how consuming it is worrying about your child. I cant say that I have ever loved another single human being the way I love her. And if this worry is part of that, I wouldnt change it for anything in the world... except for a cup of chamomile tea and a Xanex...

And you never will again, until your next child comes along. When I was pregnant with M I was concerned about not loving her as much as I do K. I couldn't imagine loving another human being that much. I do.

K never had another seizure, but then we *aggressively* treated all fevers after that. The pediatrician told me that kids who have febrile seizures tend to outgrow them by the time they're in Kindergarten. K and I were taking a mom and tot class at the time. A few weeks after her episode, she was well enough to return to class, when the mothers were talking about how hard it was staying cooped up inside with a sick child during the winter. One of the moms said, "I couldn't take it anymore. That's why I brought J to class a few weeks ago when he had roseola." I was speechless. My daughter almost died because she was frustrated with being cooped up with a sick child.

Something else to worry about - idiot parents who don't have enough sense to keep their sick kids at home.

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Holy ****.
You HAVE to be kidding me?????
THAT woman brought a SICK child DELIBERATLY to a class with OTHER kids?
jesus christ, some parents shouldnt BE allowed out of thier homes.

It is amazing how selfish and irresponsible people can be.
Whinning because they have to be in a house with thier child while they are sick? What the hell?! Mad

My aunt did this to me a few months ago. She lives in NM and was coming to TX to stay with my other aunt.. she stopped in at my house when she got in TX for a few minutes to sayhi. She held bean and played with her and then left.
2 days later, bean had 103. fever and a RED RED throat. STREP.. poor baby. :-(
So after her doc appointment and a really hard afternoon of a crying angry baby, I called my mom.
My aunt had been staying at her house before she elft for TX. I told my mom that bean had strep.. she didnt say anything for a minute or so. Then I asked her what was wrong.
She said , just like this... " Melanie stopped to see you didnt she?" , I said yeah.. why? " Melanie was coming down with strep before she left for TX"
Ohhhh i hit the ROOF. How DARE she.
How can people be this DAMN dumb?
GGGrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!

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Oooh, don't get me started. I've vented about that here a whole lot. J_B, I've had almost exactly the same experience, though thank goodness (knock on wood) without such awful consequences. People can be so incredibly stupid and selfish on this subject.

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My friend's child did die because some idiot didn't keep her sick kid home from pre-school.

I had the big frantic just yesterday after reading a little thing in my newspaper about a kid who died from a "tree fort accident" a few years ago.

We have a tree fort!

All I could think about was broken necks yesterday.

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It get's worse.
For the second week, I'll get letters home from school,
that one of my daughter's classmates came down with
strep throat. 2 days later they're back in school *argh*
90 % of the mothers in her class are stay-at-home Moms
and they can't wait to get the kids back to school.

Back to the fears: For a while I had this dream repeating
over and over again, that my daughter got lost in a department store and I couldn't find her. What a nightmare, and I
couldn't shake it for a long time. That's when I started internet shopping <paranoid>

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One of beans favorite things to do during the day is to have a sheet draped over her head and walk around screaming. Laughing

THAT has brought on the broken neck fear as well.
What happened with the tree accident? Did a child fall out of the tree?
I guess there is no rest for the weary in the fear catagory.

Is it posted somewhere that it is OK to take sick kids around other kids?
If so, I want to take that note down. I can not believe people would do those things.
I am willing to bet, these exact parents are the kinds of employees who wont go to work because they have the sniffles in fear of infecting the entire office ( more of a lazy excuse not to go to work..b ut hey!)
so if they can think about it in an ADULT situation, why is it ok to NOT think about it when it comes to kids?

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The article didn't say what the accident was which just left plenty of room for speculation.

And believe me, I have speculated everything.

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CJ – after 2 or 3 days (forget which) after taking penicillin you are no longer contagious with strep throat. I know this because my child got it from school too. Luckily for me and unluckily for my daughter it was during February vacation. I was going to send her to my mom’s but wanted to make sure when she stopped being contagious. The doctor said she would be fine after so many days after taking penicillin. And usually a day after taking the medicine, they kids seem fine. Unfortunately with strep throat at least, most people do not realize they have it until after they have infected several others. That does not let people like shewolfnm’s aunt off the hook. If you even suspect having something contagious you need to keep yourself away from others; just common sense.

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Oh that it were more common.

I've said before that my daughter's best friend's mom is a really bad offender in this area. Sozlet's been sick a LOT this winter, and a high percentage of the time it's been directly attributable to bf. They're on spring break right now and I've been looking forward to the germ break, too. Bf's mom wants to get the girls together. I haven't responded. "I would, except I don't trust you" doesn't seem like the optimal response...

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Have you actually approached the subject with the offender soz?

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The death fear.

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